The Confluence of Leadership, Psychedelics, and Nature with Marcus Druen

Sebastien Fouillade: 0:00

Welcome, Marcus, to Leadershipedelics. Marcus Druen and we were just talking about your last name beforehand and how to say it properly, and I think why don't you enlighten me on the history you were just sharing with me? I think it's fantastic.

Marcus Druen: 0:16

Yeah, so in German we pronounce it Druen, and it has a French origin, goes all the way back to the Huguenots, and the Huguenots were slaughtered, I think, by the Catholic Church some six, seven hundred years ago, and the people that survived they actually fled, and a lot of them fled to the part of Germany where I grew up, and a lot of them are called Druen. So wherever I go in the world and there is another Druen, it's actually a far-flung cousin in some shape or form, including people in Kansas and Texas I've come across, believe it or not.

Sebastien Fouillade: 0:50

Druen, I like that. I like how you say it. It's just, ah, it's beautiful. Well, thanks for being here with us today.

Marcus Druen: 0:59

My absolute pleasure.

Marcus Druen: 1:01

And where are you calling from? So I'm calling from my. I call it my forest. It's not my forest, but I live in a forest. I'm very lucky. It's in the Surrey Hills in the south of England, Europe. And yeah, I have just been out in the forest. I've seen our fox, and this all sounds like I own this place. No, it's just, I have a relationship with this fox. Do you know why?

Marcus Druen: 1:32

The fox, we think, gets drunk on the apples that are falling down, not in autumn, but actually in springtime, when everything warms up and the apples are fermented. The fox comes and eats the apples and gets drunk and basically just lies in our garden. All do lulley, Wow, Because this happens every year. So the first year around I thought, oh my God, this poor fox, Maybe he got hit by a car because it was really, really limping and they're lying really weird. It's like, oh gosh, hopefully it's going to die quick. And then haven't seen him for a year.

Marcus Druen: 2:09

Next year, same thing this year. It's like, hang on a second. The chances that this is another, yet another fox that gets some kind of injury is actually quite low. So I sniffed it out a little bit. I should actually observed it for like 15, 20 minutes. And then I saw it coming back from the back of the garden with a big brown round thing, almost like when dogs have tennis balls, like tennis balls. I was like it's an apple from our apple tree. And this brings us right into psychedelics. Animals love anything that's mind-altering, and it's the stone ape theory.

Sebastien Fouillade: 2:48

Oh, I love it. Now I do have a follow up question on that in psychedelics, which is I thought dogs didn't like to eat mushrooms. Yeah, because I've tried. This is going to sound terrible, I might get in trouble, but I wouldn't say I tried to give my dog psychedelic mushrooms. I've just tried to give my dog normal mushrooms and he really wasn't into it. But now that you're telling me about the fox getting drunk on apples, I'm like, wow, like, yeah, they like to explore, but today you met the fox while the fox was sober, right.

Marcus Druen: 3:32

That's the fox was sober. It was in its hunting ground in the forest where there's also a few birds of prey I met. We've got the dragonfly season, so we've got lots of different dragonflies here the blue ones, the green ones, some big brown ones. I mean they're up to this big, they're like whoa.

Sebastien Fouillade: 3:52

Wow, wow. Now it's beautiful. So that's how you spent most of your day exploring the forest.

Marcus Druen: 4:00

Some parts of the day Because I'm like hey, I want some of that yeah. So one reason why we live here. This goes all the way back, I think three years ago and it was catalyzed by a psychedelic experience I had with San Pedro, with the psychoactive compound mescaline. I had a conversation with a tree for probably two, three hours which felt as real as this conversation and I made a promise to that tree.

Marcus Druen: 4:26

I said I will take more care of the environment. I don't know how, I don't know when, but there will be something that I will do right. And then, sooner than later, we basically got kicked out by our then landlady to solve this property out of her portfolio because it didn't suit anymore, and we got this opportunity to move into this house, which is in the forest, and I thought that's exactly the signal that I was receiving back then, because only when I live in the forest I will be surrounded by nature, I will go with the seasons, I will understand the seasons, I will pay attention to what's happening and that means I will care more. And also it means I will stop driving to go for a walk. That feels really bizarre, actually, when you drive to then go for a walk. So we love walking. We walk either in the morning or in the evening, and whether it's nice, we walk twice.

Sebastien Fouillade: 5:20

Yeah, beautiful. Well, I just walked back home before I called dropping our daughter to school and we walked through a forest to get there. We've got a little forest and I can relate to that. This is just, I mean just breathing the air. My wife was telling me how healing it is, just the energy from the tree and the science behind it, which I don't know. But I don't know if you've dug more into that, but the healing energy that you get from just walking in there, from breathing the air, from being with the tree, it's beautiful.

Marcus Druen: 5:59

Yeah, good for you and good on you to do that and to make it a habit, right? So it's. All these things are choices. I'm sure you could have taken another path or another modality, but you chose to walk your daughter through a forest.

Sebastien Fouillade: 6:14

Oh yeah, I mean, there's so much goodness into that. I've done. I've got two older boys and I used to do that with them and you know, walking to school with them. There's just something special about it taking them to school and being able to walk there rather than have them take the school bus, spending that time together. Any season, too, when it's raining, we'll walk to school. I think the only time we don't walk to school is when things are icy on the ground and we could hurt ourselves, and there's a lot of that in the Northwest here in the winter. Yeah, I was going to say enough about me.

Sebastien Fouillade: 6:57

Let's go back to you, your background. So you know, I think when we talked a few months ago, we realized you know, we both you worked with Microsoft not directly at Microsoft, but with Microsoft. So we have some stories there and you spend 20 years as a was it as a consultant or what did you do for 20 years? Because you know, when I looked at it, it said you played the success game for 20 years, and I feel like you know, I've got a little bit of understanding of that as well, and it can be tiring after a while. So curious about your background and how you met with psychedelics eventually.

Marcus Druen: 7:41

Yeah, so I've been working at the intersection of personal development, leadership, organization design change for the last 20 years and in that capacity, I draw on skills or capabilities that you call coaching and consulting, facilitation, mentoring, challenging space, holding very, very different things. And it's really interesting that you hit on a question that is actually a big development question for me that I have not. I think I'm getting very close to a more definitive answer. So if you ask me today right, it's the first of June 2023, marcus, I'm a client and I want to buy you, but you got to tell me are you a coach or are you a consultant? But you, this binary, you have to fit in one of the boxes. Yeah, and you know what big corporates are like. You often do need to fit in a box.

Sebastien Fouillade: 8:37

That's my biggest challenge. Yeah, I don't like boxes.

Marcus Druen: 8:40

Oh no. So I would say today I'm a coach. Yeah, Now, had you asked me a few years ago, I would have said I'm a consultant.

Sebastien Fouillade: 8:49

You know it's a big journey to get from there to here or here to there. I've talked about that with several other people and there's a big internal journey. I think that happens when you go from calling yourself a consultant to a coach. What went through you and like, why was that title of coach something that you had to come to and kind of unfold to?

Marcus Druen: 9:18

Yeah, so I'm an extrovert, I'm quite forceful and when you look at all the other big five traits, I'm not a coach on paper. I'm the opposite of a coach on paper, however, I'm an expert. I'm someone that can talk, I can, someone that can really entice people, advocate things, promote things. So when it comes to, let's say, organizational change, there's you got to have a vision. There is a pain point. You need to define the problem really well, because the problem well defined is a problem half solved. I'm very analytical as well and I'm also very creative. I can talk big picture until the counts come home. So that's good. As a consultant, when you in particular in the beginning of an engagement, when it's all about the energy, the motivation, right, do you have some fuel in this, in this joint tank and coach, oh wow, it's about listening and patience and diligence and sticking to processes and asking really good questions, but good questions in a very plain way, not in a oh look at me, I'm super clever kind of way. That's more like a consulting type question.

Marcus Druen: 10:34

So yeah, I've been in a journey for the last 20 years and I would say only in the last year really, I've made a decisive move to that self identity of I am a coach and I'm actually a good coach because I learned it for the last 20 years.

Marcus Druen: 10:50

I've done I don't know how many thousand sessions, so eventually I got the gist of what it actually means. That being said, I'm not an ICF accredited coach and I don't want to be one, because I think what my clients do value in me is that I can play quite a broad spectrum of modalities that are needed in the moment. So, zooming out from the different practices, one of the things that defines me as a practitioner and that also excites me in terms of moving things forward, whether that's at an individual level, in relationships and organizations and for the whole systemic change, is the agile meme sense and response. So what is here, what's needed? Right, and then how do you respond to that? And this is not just always a one-size-fits-all approach. So, even though I do a lot of coaching these days, I might just pull up a nice, neat little model, let's say the Hawkins scale, which I love, dr David Hawkins, it's all about energy levels, it comes from kinesiology and, believe it?

Marcus Druen: 12:01

or not, a lot of my corporate clients love it because they find it so difficult to talk about their emotions. And when I sense that there's maybe something like they're sitting on and they can't really quite vocalize it, I pull up the Hawkins scale and say, just name me a few of these words that really represent how you have felt today, last week, the last month, since we spoke last time. And they say, oh God, it's this, there's anger, there's guilt. I say, okay, good, let's talk about emotions then. So I use these things almost like as a micro catalyst. It's almost like a micro training within a coaching session, because I will explain what it is afterwards, once they've made their place, their place, their words. And then they say, well, what is this, where's this coming from? Well, why does love, why does love and enlightenment stand on top? That feels a bit isoteric. I said, well, let's talk about move.

Sebastien Fouillade: 12:53

It's beautiful we have you. Your clients have been mostly in England or all over the world. I'm interested in the cultural differences you've encountered as you're doing your work and also how people are perceiving your role when you come in like a company. Because I know I've got a friend in organizational development. He did, he wrote a book and he's been trying to. He's very knowledgeable but it's really hard to break into that market working with corporations in the US because of their budgets and maybe how they see that fitting in the role of the company and kind of with all the other priorities they have. So really curious how that journey has been for you, because it sounds like you're very successful at it and breaking into that market.

Marcus Druen: 13:51

So I live in the UK for 20 years as a German and I work mostly in Germany. If I travel, most of the work is remote these days, but when I do travel, it's usually Munich, berlin or Düsseldorf, which is a smaller town in the western parts of Germany. Why do I say that? For me it's the right way around. I wouldn't want to live in Germany and work mostly in the UK. And why is that? I do like the precision that is often associated with German culture and work culture, and I do also like the muddling through, being a bit more ambiguous, being creative in the British culture. So for me as a person living here in the UK, this is awesome, because it would freak me out in Germany that I have to stick to the T and cross every dot as a person, like doing my administration and going to government bodies and stuff like that. That's a lot easier here, I find. Conversely, I find the British or the Anglo-American work culture quite difficult when it comes to not saying what they really mean. So I'm very direct, I'm very transparent, I'm radically honest, and that is more compatible with how Germans conduct business, because in the first few years in the UK I heard things like, oh, I don't disagree with you. I thought great, she's agreeing with me. No, or, with all due respect, oh great, the person's really respecting me. No, they think what I just said is utter nonsense. So there is this thing in the British work in the culture that I find it a bit difficult. That being all said, zooming out from it, I've done a lot of global work.

Marcus Druen: 15:44

So you mentioned Microsoft earlier. That was interestingly. I think it was a three or four continents, except two countries. One was the US and the other one was Germany. The Germans insisted to do it in German and the client. This was originally with Nokia and when Nokia got acquired by Microsoft, it became a Microsoft program. The client said no, effingway, we're doing this in English. This is you're not going to get your German. We call it extra sausage, like extra wurst, it's like you're going to fall in line or you're not going to get the program and off.

Marcus Druen: 16:22

So that was the reason why I actually didn't get to do this in Germany and the US had their own program and my experience so far with the US is that because so much of my work, even though the outer change might be about a merger or a restructuring or a growth spurt or a carve out from a big corporate into a small company. The essence of my work is actually inner work, so it always starts with who am I? How do I show up? What does leadership mean for me? Like really, really quite what we call inner work, inner growth, including shadow work, and I have not cracked that American culture to get in. They find it way too much. They keep telling me that I should become an independent coach, as in like find individuals because they will invest in this. But for companies, what we do my partner and I is often just too much.

Sebastien Fouillade: 17:27

Yeah, no, that's what I've seen as well, and it's a shame. It's a shame I have seen companies that are fairly successful at it in the US. There's a company locally here called Pathwise that has been coaching a lot of the leaders at Microsoft and they use a lot of psychology and their woo-woo is woven in psychological accuracy and research data to make it more digestible. But a lot of the people that I've encountered here doing that job it's the same thing. It's really hard to break in that market and bring that more subtle approach and subtle work. I mean it's not necessarily subtle when you're looking at your shadows and doing deep inner work, but it looks, I think, different. It's not as concrete, or maybe black and white. I mean it's very concrete the results. But I've been trying to figure out why, Like why is it so hard in the US? Because we all need that here. Yeah.

Marcus Druen: 18:36

And this is really a bigger problem or bigger, let's say, phenomenon. Do you know the term new work? No, you see, that's fascinating in itself. New work, I think, actually originates from the US. There is one famous company, a consultancy called the Ready, and one was called August, and then two, three other ones, and I think about 10, 15 years ago they coined the term new work. It caught on in Germany like a wildfire Because I think, as far as I can see it, there was the book by Frédéric Lalloux, reinventing Organizations, which is a global book. I'm not quite sure. I think he's a French from a French origin.

Marcus Druen: 19:30

It sounds like it, but a lot of the companies were actually that he referenced. They're actually based in the EU, in Europe. So there is quite some interesting structure historically in Europe. So we got a lot more co-ops cooperatives, I think than we have in America. So a cooperative, by design, is less top down, less focused on shareholder. There is devolved responsibility, accountability and so forth, because it's very much tied into the union, into the history of unions, which you take Germany, france, big deal like 100 years ago. And then also we have different democratic processes here.

Marcus Druen: 20:14

So the US and the UK have voting systems that are called first pass the post. That means you only need one single vote more than your rival opponent and you get all of the seats in that jurisdiction. And this is why in the UK we got prime ministers who actually win the election with something like 22, 25% of the popular vote, which is ridiculous, whereas in most European countries that I'm aware of, in particular in Germany, the Netherlands and I grew up quite closely to the Dutch border we only know coalitions. I don't think there has ever been a government where there was just one party calling the shots. The question then becomes how many parties in a coalition can you actually handle?

Marcus Druen: 21:03

I would say probably three is the maximum, whereas you get to Italy and you get like eight or 10 parties and then it becomes basically unrenovable.

Sebastien Fouillade: 21:12

I think France also. It's share of parties. It's similar.

Marcus Druen: 21:18

We had sociocracy. We have sociocracy 3.0, which is all fancy and is the open source sibling to holacracy. It's actually 100 something years old, so we have this fertile ground, I think, when it comes to new work, which is about wholeness, it's about having an evolutionary purpose, it's about distributed authority, like all the things that humans want to feel better at work, I think there is just more of a breeding ground in Europe, whereas in the US it has always been libertarian, self-made millionaire I can do this, I'm the boss which then breeds a lot of the top-down shareholder optimized type of business structure.

Sebastien Fouillade: 22:03

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because I've also seen the top-down in Europe as well, where hierarchy is really important, like I was working with Accenture in Paris back in 2007 and you will not question the boss, you will not question their boss, and in the US it's a lot easier for us to break that hierarchy. So, yeah, there's a strange mix happening and at the same time, you even mentioned the importance of the language, which I think it's getting a sidetrack. But doing your courses in German rather than English, I mean that's huge. I think Americans sometimes we forget Everybody speaks English, but it makes them tired to speak English for all day. This is not necessarily the way they want to receive information. So a lot of times I was working with customers in Europe and the fact that I could speak French to them about my work at Microsoft and how we could help them, I mean that was huge for them. And I think a lot of people forget that it's like just because people understand a language doesn't mean that it's easy to just make it the same for everyone.

Sebastien Fouillade: 23:29

So the podcast is about leadership and manifesting leadership and deep spiritual experiences and psychedelics, and you touch on the big question leadership. What does leadership mean for you. So I'll start with that. What does that mean for you? How did that evolve through the years, and what were some of those defining moments that changed your definition of leadership?

Marcus Druen: 23:55

Yeah. So, building on to what we just talked about, that still most companies are quite hierarchical. Leadership historically has been having power over other people. It's you and a hierarchy. You've got budget control, you've got the span of control. How many people you've got underneath you. So it's really having power over other people and still, in most you could argue Fortune 500 type structures, that's still the prevailing leadership.

Marcus Druen: 24:26

Let's say philosophy, irrespective of styles, but just the overarching philosophy, and I've learned through engaging with things like self-organization. Integral theory was a huge influence on me. I've got some wonderful friends and peers and people that really inspire me, like my friend, christiana Christiana Zalschella. She kept talking about no, no, no, no, no. It's not about having power over people, it's having power with and having power as. Yeah, I thought, wow, okay, well, I need to ponder on that.

Marcus Druen: 24:59

So having power, as however you define in your identity, if it has a good intention, if it wants to be in service of something else, it's a fantastic thing. You want to have more power, you want to maximize your power. If you step into that, we've got the meats of space, we've got the mind, we've got the heart, we've got the soul, we've got all these different energies. If you want to make the world a better place, please have power. So power then became a really, really big word for me to really think about. Okay, so we got power in governments, we got power in the military, we got power in these corporate organizations, but we also got power as individual agents, as autonomous catalysts, co-creating this reality moment by moment. And in the word co-creating lies the other power, let's say dimension to have power with other people together. And this is what French Revolution was all about. Right, give the power to the people. So that's the first response to what does leadership mean for me?

Marcus Druen: 26:06

And then, on my journey, I started to actually realize that leadership in terms of leading others, like I used to work at Telefonica's Corporate University, which is really brilliant, and they have this very fixed corporate curriculum leading serve, leading others, leading innovation, leading the organization, leading change. My course was called Leadership for Change and I thought like, oh, I'm going to sing, I can't lead anyone. It's just actually not, technically speaking, working. It's just I can only lead myself, in that pure sense of the word. Because when I look at it from a change perspective and we all know the mantra change starts with you in the here and now and ends with you, in the here and now there's nothing else. Right? If you talk about, hey, we think we need to change, we need to have this strategy, well, that's talking about change.

Marcus Druen: 27:06

You reflect on something and, let's say, you do a retrospective, and if something is in the past, well then you do that, but you're not changing. The actual act of changing happens in the moment and it is usually a thought, a self-limiting belief, something in our mind, in our nervous system, that's just slightly shifting. And then, because it's shifting, it catalyzes the shift in the people around us. So if that is true, I said, then I can't lead anyone except for myself, because everyone else is doing their thing to change themselves by leading themselves. And then the third lens I looked at it and this is very much corporate speak.

Marcus Druen: 27:46

We need to empower our employees. Empowerment is super important. And then there's, of course, the whole DEI fraction that for them, it's their lifeblood. But again, you can't empower people. It's the same patronizing behavior that we've inherited from previous generations. Because if I am going to empower you, but what if I don't want to be empowered? What if I have so much trauma that I can't be empowered? So then for me, zooming out from this, if you really want to be a leader, if you say I want to be in service of something bigger than just me, I want to take more responsibility for more people, because I have the capacity, I have the luck and the talent and the will to do that great. Create the condition in which people can empower themselves, lead themselves with a name, with a purpose that is ideally, hopefully, aligned with the purpose of the organization, beyond the profit maximization. That's as good as it gets in my simplistic view, right.

Sebastien Fouillade: 28:51

No, it's great. I'd love to see more of that. How did your spiritual journey evolve with the definition of leadership and parallel? I'm just really curious about how those two if you were always, because I'm assuming you consider yourself spiritual now based on our previous conversations, but some people sometimes they don't always consider themselves spiritual and I'm curious how that evolved in parallel with your definition of leadership and the inner work and shadow work you're doing.

Marcus Druen: 29:29

Yeah. So it's really interesting. It brings us back to labels or identities around coach, consultant, stuff like that. I've never self-identified as a leader until last year, and this was quite a late coming, I would say, and that's okay, because I never was ready for it.

Marcus Druen: 29:51

And talking about shadow and ego and, let's say, my narcissistic upbringing, there was something in me that knew this is not going to be good for you and the world if you now become a leader. And this is really important because I see so many people that at such a young age, get so much or take so much, assume so much responsibility and power that, quite frankly, they're fucked things up. I would have fucked it up as well. There was something in me that knew this is not my path. I need to do a lot of learning, a lot of healing, a lot of reinventing, reimagination and so forth.

Marcus Druen: 30:26

And then last year I had two really profound cyber and experiences One, and they were basically defined by two words each. Really yeah, sometimes the journey can be quite heavy, quite shadow work, crying, converging, all the rest of it. These two words were very different. In the first one, in Costa Rica, I had a beautiful place called Brava Earth. Out of the sudden, there was this source voice which I'd never heard before, and it says let it go. I'm like what? Yeah, yeah, let it go. It starts saying I'm like no, come on, it's not that simple.

Sebastien Fouillade: 31:14

No, no, no, no, no, no it is.

Marcus Druen: 31:16

Just let it go and I knew in that moment that this is a big deal and I'm still integrating. That's really interesting. It's like peeling the onion. There's so many things now that I've encountered in the last 18 months that I know, oh yeah, that's another letting go opportunity for me. So why do I bring this up?

Marcus Druen: 31:36

This was the nail in the coffin of my dying atheist inside me. They had already been quite weak in his voice, on my inner family system, on the stage. But that experience, where it was clearly absolutely in my felt, experience not authored by anything that I would self identify as me Okay, that's what people call God, that's what people call source, whatever you want to call it I'm in, I'm dropping the labor. I'm even dropping the sort of like that tentative secular spirituality was like no, no, no, I'm spiritual.

Marcus Druen: 32:19

There is something out there. I don't know what it is. It could be dark matter, it could be dark energy. It could be something there that I actually think that maybe not us, but with the help of AI and some other tech, maybe 10, 20, 50 generations after us. So in the larger schemes of things, not long actually, I actually think we will find out what it is. There's something in me that feels that, that maybe it's my ego that wants to believe it. But it's just something. Keep people asking myself why are you so interested about the cosmos? I said it's a cosmic game. All I know is there is a game. We don't know the rules. We are probably on level 17. Probably at some point someone will tell us. But then 50,000 levels, right, and we are like whoa we got to level 17.

Marcus Druen: 33:06

Awesome. So that's the spirituality answer. Now, how does this link to my, let's say, embodiment of leadership? Then the other psilocybin experience, that was really big. There was again just one word, because I was. I noticed, okay, peaked.

Marcus Druen: 33:28

And it's been quite long that the music changes. It's getting a little bit more vibrant. People starting to eat some nuts and fruits and sitting there thinking like, oh okay, well, that wasn't, it was just nice this time. Well, that's okay, you know, it doesn't always have to be this profound and that it just hit leader. I'm like what do you mean? I said, yeah, leader, you need to become a leader now we haven't and this was interesting we haven't put you back on the shore when you nearly drowned 10 years ago to not be a leader. So you need to become a leader now. I thought, okay, that's something that I will explore. I don't know how, I don't know when, but I will take a look at it. And now fast forward about a year.

Marcus Druen: 34:14

It's a label or an identity that I do. It resonates with me. So, for example, I've been at a spectacularly warm like emotionally, spiritually warm event in Brussels last week called Regions Unite. I have a massive passion for Web3, the technology underpinning Web3, not necessarily the crypto degenerative part of which I'm also part of, and I said a few things at the end in the circle around psychedelics and the safe and intentional use of psychedelics, and quite a few people came afterwards and wanted to speak to me.

Marcus Druen: 34:57

And this might be 30 years yeah, this is my daily bread markers, but for me it's new because I've always been the expert, the consultant or the person that you pay money for to hold space. But this is much more organic. This is natural. You didn't know what I do for a living. Probably they just saw me for who I was in that moment.

Marcus Druen: 35:21

And, yeah, one definition of leadership is that you have people that say I feel intrigued, I feel pulled, I want to work with you, I want to learn from you, and then again it gets into different labels and identities. But there was someone that actually said afterwards, when you stood up and you shared what you shared, I knew you are my man or my guy my guy, I think. He said, and we were talking about potentially holding space for a psychedelic journey. And that was really deeply touching for me because, as I said, being pretty much a middle-aged man or human. This is new for me and it feels nice and it feels safe. I feel safe in putting myself out there because I feel safe inside now and let's say, 10, 15, 20 years ago I did not feel safe inside myself.

Sebastien Fouillade: 36:21

No, that's a big deal. And the term leader we define leadership, but I think the leader wearing that label is a big deal. And I'm curious your definition of the term leader. It sounds like it's almost similar to the definition of guru that I've heard before, but it's like being able to pull or inspire, maybe. Or inspire someone and bring them from one place to another. How would you define that term later? No-transcript the way you're wearing it.

Marcus Druen: 37:04

The way I'm wearing it is that of a guide, a Sherpa, I don't know, that's not cultural appropriation, but the reason why this resonates with me is when you have been on an 8,000 peak and you've seen shit and storms and nearly died five times and you survived well, you probably now have earned the merits to take Western clients up for $100,000 that don't know what they're doing, but they actually don't know what they're doing. And I've been in some quite extreme adventure spots as a bodyboarder, which is a lay down version of surfing, and also I have climbed 4K peaks at least once in a life-threatening situation and I was absolutely glad to have a guide that knows what they're doing. So the leader sometimes have to make the tough chords. It's like the captain of a ship right and or the captain in an aircraft when ship hits the fan for creation can be overvalued as in like it just don't work.

Marcus Druen: 38:06

So sometimes in a crisis mode, this is a beautiful work of the sonnading matrix. Sometimes, when it's crisis mode, you've got to have one or two people that actually make the decision very, very quick, based on, I would say, a triangulation of sensing like what's here, for which mindfulness and all that kind of stuff. Presencing is really helpful. Second thing is your experience. I was going to say we've done an experience.

Marcus Druen: 38:34

Have I seen this before? Right. And then, when it comes to that one moment where you go either left or right, I would say it's intuition, it's trust your gut, because it's so much faster than any analytical decision-making framework that you can now apply. You just have to now jump. There's no more. There's just no time, right, yeah.

Sebastien Fouillade: 38:55

It's interesting because the question of can AI replace leaders in those situations there's always something I kind of tinker with is like well, one of my guests said we're going from the age of knowledge to the age of wisdom, and I've been thinking about that a lot, because AI has a lot of knowledge, it's assimilated all that knowledge, but I wouldn't necessarily say it has wisdom.

Sebastien Fouillade: 39:26

It doesn't have the wisdom of the years, it doesn't necessarily have the intuition, and so I think maybe a result of AI is we'll start putting more value on the wisdom, on the wisdom of people who actually have climbed those 10,000 feet peaks, who have gone through all that, who are able to look at something, take the input, use their experience, combine with their intuition and make a decision.

Sebastien Fouillade: 39:59

I'm hopeful that it will become more important. We might have to go through a dip first with all the buzz around AI where we try to replace everything, but I'm hopeful that the reverence for wisdom and I think also leader, rhymes with elder and especially if you're in the middle of your life, there's accepting becoming that elder, being in that position where you're actually helping people who don't necessarily have the experience, I mean if you're leading a psychedelic ceremony, for example, like you sure hope, the leader has a lot of experience with psychedelics and has gone through the storms, through all that stuff. Just like in a company, you're expecting that the leader has quite a bit of experience, so I like that.

Marcus Druen: 41:00

Yeah, and I'm learning from exactly those type of elders, people with wisdom. I'm an intern in Third Wave's coaching program, where I got my own coaching training about one one and a half years ago, and I'm learning from particularly an amazing woman, but Marie, Dr Marie Mbuny, originating from Cameroon. So, and then there's another one of the lead facilitators, Jen from Alaska, like an indigenous woman from Alaska. And it brings us back to the conversation about the forest and why I wanted to live in a forest. Because I haven't got a fucking clue what the land actually is, because I'm a Western, I'm a product of this globalized, capitalist, knowledge worker type society and I thrive quite well in it, in this narrow view. And then, through the help of psychedelics, I started to realize, gosh, there's so much else out there, so many different types of knowing. Mindfulness, meditation, a particular Zocan meditation, gave me proper non-dual experiences, that mind blowing experience. So I thought like, wow, what are we optimizing for? What's the success game all good for if you die and you've never had a non-dual experience? I know it might sound a bit judgmental, but for me it was like my God, I'm so glad I didn't. Do you know what my first non-dual experience was? My near death experience. I had to get this close to actually like, oh, this is what my yoga teacher and my meditation teacher I was talking about, and I just keep busy, you know, being quite like high performing in it rather than just letting it happen. So, yeah, what I really find helpful with the, let's say, the emergence of the bigger psychedelic field is the bridge between the West and the Elders and the wise people from indigenous tribes, because they carry a completely different type of not just knowledge but wisdom than I could and I learned so much from it. Like Maurice says, let me just I hope I get this right, he said so the shamanic check-in this is so relevant to coaching, by the way.

Marcus Druen: 43:16

The shamanic check-in is am I clear from? Do I have anything to prove, anything to protect, anything to hide and anything to? I forgot the fourth one, but you get the gist right. So are you actually pure? Are you clear? Like, what are you serving here right now? Who are you serving? How are you serving a person? And I mean, when I did this for the first time, I was like, oh my God, something to prove? Yep, Absolutely. You know, this is part of my shadow. Not necessarily something to hide, I'm quite honest, and not something to protect either, but something to prove. That was absolutely what I realized. Gosh, just be careful with that.

Sebastien Fouillade: 44:04

Yeah, that's a wonderful check. It just takes me back. Last year we did our Sacred Creativity Retreat in Peru, in the Sacred Valley of Peru, and I was helping the Shippebo Healer with the. We had five guests and I was helping him. While he was singing to each guest, I was taking their purge buckets and saying a little prayer and being there for them and I just realized it's like wow, being of pure service, where it's not about the ego and it's just you're just doing it like with no judgment and you're not even thinking it's not serving you in any way, it's serving them. And when this was like the first time, it really hit me just how wonderful it is. But also how other things can get in the way, like you talked about, like your shadows, your ego and trying to prove something you know or distracting you from something that maybe you're trying not to think about. Yeah, that's a wonderful reflection. I'll definitely turn that into a short because I want to share that message.

Sebastien Fouillade: 45:18

Another thing you've been talking about is creation and creativity and co-creating. That's another big thing that I really love talking about is. I mean, the retreat we have is called the Sacred Creativity Retreat, right? So it's a big deal for me and for the partner I do this with. What does creativity mean for you and what do you think is its place in the world today, and why do you think it's missing in the world today?

Marcus Druen: 45:51

Yeah. So for me, creativity has a lot to do with qualities and habits and practices that we were mostly most of us absolutely world-class, excellent as a kid. It's childlike. It's when you are, when there's no preconception of what to do, when you just express yourself in a way that is very authentic. So when you look at artists when they go to art school, they often have to break down completely and go back to just drawing or painting or whatever, like a kid, like they did as a kid, because by that time they just have been so convoluted with.

Marcus Druen: 46:34

You should do this and look at Picasso and look at the impressionist, and there's all this kind of structure wearing them down. And then there might be, for some, there is that moment where there is just that why, how does this work? This is how it works. And then, eight days later, and no food, just some water and some bare sleep, and they produced 50 pieces and this is basically now. They are now there, right, this is now their art, this is their ductus, and you can see it in the, in the obsession again with artists like and I do some some bits not in the last few years, but I've done some some macro photography you just lose track of time, and that's what kids do. You know, you're never bored, you're never distracted by anything if you are absolutely in the flow of doing something creative. So that's the first response. And how does it fit into the word right now? And where where is it missing? Well, it's missing catastrophically in business, because in business it's not incentivized.

Marcus Druen: 47:33

Anything that sounds like we need to be more creative, more innovative, and that this, just it's a, it's a call to use creativity to an end that is actually in conflict with creativity.

Marcus Druen: 47:52

It's just, it's just sort of like a it's, it's, it's, it's the opposite of psychedelic, it's. It's quite bland, blunt, maybe even as well. It's more 2D, like not even 3D or or technical law, and at the same time and this is a fascinating paradox that I encounter a lot, and this brings us back to new work and in in, in the you must know this as a, as an engineer, in agility, right, when you, when you are agile, everyone wants to be a co-creator, sebastian, everyone talks about co creation, and what does it actually mean? What does it require? At the, at the, at the nub of of the issue, right, what's the essence of co-creation Is that you trust the process and that you let go of your need for control and because corporations are embedded in incentive structures, in power structures, in whatever structure, it actually kills and stifles the very thing that everyone wants to be creative.

Sebastien Fouillade: 49:01

Yeah, yeah it's, it's funny. I read a few books on creativity because I I forgot them, but it all kind of stuck in there as a mush of wisdom. But, like you know, one of the big things I remember from the books is is the more you're trying to hold on and control the creativity, the less people can be creative. And and they've had studies where you know they they try to create the best incentive plans for creativity and it's really hard because as soon as you start paying somebody for being creative, you start hurting their creativity. Yeah, and so I'll.

Sebastien Fouillade: 49:39

I'll use myself as an example, but over the last year and a half, I haven't been paid to be creative. I've been creative to be creative, to be myself, and I've been more creative in the last year and a half by by creating, you know, pilot shows for animated animated shows, creating AI stuff, creating art, but I'm not paid for it, so I can go anywhere and I can experiment and explore. And then on the other end, you'll see you know companies like with Tesla, with Elon Musk, who's like, hey, I need some butts in the seat, I need you, like 60 hours a week and you need to innovate because we're like the best car company in the world.

Marcus Druen: 50:24

Now, innovate now.

Sebastien Fouillade: 50:27

I'm just like dude. Like how do you do that? Like, how do you innovate if people have no life? They don't forget what's like to be human? Like you're just going to innovate, like you know, move the needle a little bit because people will innovate following like Cartesian processes. It's not going to be a natural human innovation on a wide spectrum of possibilities. It's going to be a very structured, limited innovation which we see, and we see companies following each other and I feel like companies. Now I'm answering the question for you. Sorry, I feel like companies now and you answered as well. I'm just building on it. I'm so excited about creativity. Companies now, just, they've just forgotten they need that innovation that authentic creativity brings right, but they can't get it because the more they can they try to grab onto it, the more they try to control it, they can't. So I don't know, have you worked with clients that are struggling with creating creative environments?

Marcus Druen: 51:37

Yeah, and then they create creative environments hey, let's have some fun play and you can get in from nine to nine to three or something. Now I don't want to be facetious. About 20 years ago, when I came to London and I had my first role and I was a board assistant, like an executive assistant, to some really really cool managers, like leaders and actually really disruptive leaders. One went to become the big commercial officer at Google just after the founders, and there was one, let's say, middle manager he said to me. He said, marcus, you're a good guy, you're really good in this, you can really do good meeting all the kind of stuff. You're really smart. You even challenged McKinsey. I really like you. But you have to learn one thing you got to leave this emotion of stuff out here. Emotions in the workplace no, that's absolutely not a good match. So very quickly after that I actually quit my career, so to speak, and I embarked on this journey to become who I eventually became, which is a transformation leadership coach.

Marcus Druen: 52:38

And the reason why I bring the story up is it brings us back to the artists. Many artists, if not most artists, do their best work when it comes from the depth of their shadow. That's just the way it is. It's not happy clappy. Everything is jolly. It is when it is also painful. And so how can you be creative and innovative at work if you are told you have to leave a massive part of yourself at the door? This is the big mismatch. So how can we solve it? I mentioned earlier the book by Frédéric Lalloux, re-inventing Organizations. I don't think he coined the term wholeness, but he made it quite popular in the business world in Europe, and it's really something that resonates now with clients, and a very, very simple intervention that you can do in every meeting is to do a check-in, and the check-in is not what am I'm up to, what am I working?

Marcus Druen: 53:36

No, no, no, it's not that verbal reporting, looking good in front of everyone else when you report to the boss? No, no, no. How do you land in this meeting right now? How do you feel? Are you tired, are you happy, are you sad? Like a proper human to human check-in, that just increases the temperature, the emotional, human temperature in a room by 10 degrees and I bet you my money on it that whatever you do afterwards has the chance to be more creative and more innovative.

Sebastien Fouillade: 54:11

Yeah, now I can see that it makes it more human as well, which we're taught to leave that home right. And I had that same conversation in 2008 with a manager at Microsoft and she's like, yeah, just your home stuff, keep it at home. Basically just be that person at home, but when you're at work, be that other person. And I was like, huh, that's not going to work. I never followed that recommendation and she was my manager for a couple of years. But yeah, no, I get it and it's. I think there's an opportunity to do that now, like companies are looking for that authenticity, but at the same time, I don't know if they're fully ready for it. So it's, you know, be authentic as long as you still think like everybody else. And I'm going to take a stab at Amazon They've got like 16 leadership principles. I'm like be authentic.

Marcus Druen: 55:24

I need a PhD for that.

Sebastien Fouillade: 55:26

Yeah, be authentic as long as you follow the 16 leadership principle. That basically help us program the entire organization. And you know, if you look at the way Amazon works, is they're basically programming their whole system and how people work and behave. It's all structured, the compensation is very manipulative and how the structure stuck distribution over the years after you start, and there's a lot of that going on. So you know, when you think about creativity, I don't know. You know Amazon is a lot of good thing and they're efficient and they deliver packages on time, and so maybe the way they approach creativity is they have different needs for creativity and that works to build a machine. But, like you know, there's a book on Pixar Creativity Inc. There's a fascinating read that talks about how they create the amazing movies they've created and a lot of it. There's a much bigger human factor that they need to bring there and I just find it really sad that this seems to be reserved to entertainment companies.

Marcus Druen: 56:40

Yeah, and so one of the things that absolutely, I guess, changed the path of my life really, but it's also really something that I fundamentally believe in. As I said earlier, when I dove into the Web3 rabbit hole, one of the first things because I'm a very visual person that absolutely struck me was this Cambrian explosion of creative logos like a DAO or whatever. A project, a protocol, a DAO these are companies, right, this is potentially the next evolutionary stage of companies, corporations, C-Corp, b-corp, whatever. Now, if you take the classic KPMG, microsoft, adobe, what have you? No matter what color it is, what shape it is, it is meant to convey one thing we are serious. We are so serious and so professional that you can really really trust us. But the problem is we don't trust them anymore, and it's not because the people are assholes, it's because the incentive structures turns those people into these roles to do things that are detrimental to the health of the planet, to the mental health of the employees, of the customers, of everyone, over indexing on the wealth of the shareholders. We all know that Now, when you now look at almost I would say almost any logo, but I could now point out to things like Uniswap and Sushi Swap and they are fun.

Marcus Druen: 58:06

They look like kids' icons. This is something that my 14-year-old son would come up with if he had a project in school. Hey, how do you want to call your idea? Oh, I'm going to call it Uniswap, as a universal oh, and because unicorns are quite cool and it's pink and it includes the girls. This is fucking cool. I was like where has this come from? What have I not been noticing? Because I came to Bitcoin, ethereum and called quite late. So there is the next generation, the Gen Zs, the digital natives that bring that raw creativity, that raw energy Again where it was last week, the Regency Unite. This was almost anti-polished and I loved it. There was nothing that said this is a polished event. It was crafty, it was makeshift and it was creative. There were lots of actually tactile materials in place rather than laminated posters. So it's coming.

Marcus Druen: 59:13

I have hope.

Sebastien Fouillade: 59:14

Yeah, no, it's wonderful. I feel like big companies are also stuck in their brand. They've created a system they can't escape from. Microsoft has a certain perception of their brand and changing that is a huge risk that most companies aren't willing to take because it's a big unknown for shareholders. So it's easier to stay the course and I think there's a place for everyone. There's going to be a place for that. But those new companies need to come and kind of freshen things up, like you're saying. I wish I'd been at that event. That sounds like a great event. It is awesome.

Marcus Druen: 1:00:06

It really is and it's growing. I mean I'm sure it will come to America or Canada. It's been in Brussels and Berlin we can put the link in the show notes and I'm working with a 29-year-old chap from Berlin and we have this project. No one does business these days. We're having a project and it's called Inner First and it's helping people to do their inner work in the web. Free space, like regeneration, has to start from within and within. I think within about one or two nights he just whacked up this website, which looks absolutely beautiful and it looks decidedly not like a business. It looks like a fantasy word with AI-generated angel-wing type creatures.

Marcus Druen: 1:00:55

And I love it because, yeah, this is different. I don't want to have another business. I've already got my coaching business. I want something fun that inspires people to really co-create.

Marcus Druen: 1:01:09

For me, one of the things I really learned in the last few years we can only co-create ourselves out of this mess. There's no other way. You are part of the solution, I'm part of the solution, and so is everyone else, and that's what we now learn to harness. How can we make, how can we, how can we have as many people as possible to really find out why they exist? Like? I fundamentally believe that every human being has an evolutionary purpose, just like every bee, every dolphin, every fox has an evolutionary purpose. And then, zooming out at a human societal level, the question now emerging is what kind of ancestor do we want to be Like? We want to be better than what we're currently doing, and then maybe even bolder. What is actually the evolutionary purpose of humans in the context that we collectively now reach the planetary boundaries because of our overreach? So when you get to these type of levels, we need every human on deck, not just a few leaders and a few billionaires.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:02:13

I mean scaling that. That's always the question I have how do you scale this up? I mean, I do my work, we have minimal impact and I'm actually okay with that having small impact. I'm actually because I feel like sometimes with businesses you're over focused and scaling up and that focus sometimes hurts the experience you give people. So I'm curious in your vision of helping everyone, what do you think is the right approach to help people, like find their evolutionary purpose and kind of just help each other and grow and make that vision happen?

Marcus Druen: 1:02:56

I don't know what the right approach is. I have an approach that either resonates with someone or not. So when it resonates, I think it looks like this that the common pattern is as follows the pain needs to be big enough. Sad but sure. We don't move unless there's pain, but we're hardwired to move away from pain. So if the pain is big enough and there is that faint spark, that sort of like light at the end of the tunnel, there's something out. There must be some kind of fantasy.

Marcus Druen: 1:03:30

Or, as Jordan Peterson says, you got to have an aim. You don't need objectives and KPRs and that stuff, but you need to have a broad aim, because if you actually want to go there and maybe this is your part then you're doing something fundamentally wrong, and then you need to be roughly clear on what kind of direction you want to go. And then for me it all starts with really understanding what story you're telling yourself, because you mentioned the word a few times. We are all programmed. We're programmed by not just corporations, by religion, by parents, by teachers. This is just humanity. I'm not even judging it. We are being programmed because we are absolutely helpless for at least for three, four years, and we are actually only really fully functioning, or the expectation is to fully function by the time we are 18, 20 or something.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:04:20

So we have to be programmed. I'd say we're probably hardwired from evolution to be programmed and then we take data in right, so we get programmed with whatever comes in.

Marcus Druen: 1:04:34

So now taking you back and the listeners into yourself, into your meat soup. So you got that interception. So, what feels good, what doesn't feel good, start to listen to your body, which is something I came very later to this game. And then, when something feels really really good, coming back to power, right, when you feel power as okay, I feel power as a coach, I feel power as a gardener, I feel power as a parent. That's your authenticity and that now may or may not resonate with another fundamental human need that we all have and that is your need for attachment.

Marcus Druen: 1:05:12

And if you find that bridge, that link that you say I can be myself and I can say and do things that way I feel good about, and if you then sense and the people around you say, yeah, I like that, Then you're onto something, because then you are, then you actually can, can transcend that paradox, that often that competing commitment between authenticity and attachment. And that brings us right back to the corporate C-suite. Right, it's not that they don't want to be authentic, they can't, because if they were too authentic, they would lose the attachment of their boss, of their shareholder, of maybe even their spouse, who said hey, honey, I like you as a vice president with a big company car. Now you are like a lead in an agile context. I don't like leads right. So that, I would say, is the way I work with most people, whether they're clients, or my partner, my son, anyone like that. Just, we all have that authentic voice and we all need to be to belong to something.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:06:13

Yeah, authenticity. Yeah, authenticity is a big deal. I went through my own journey there. I just call it multi-dimensional authenticity because I think a lot of us, if they're put in an environment that is extreme, like an extreme corporate environment or maybe some other environment that really demands a certain part of you, we might picture our authenticity to be maybe the opposite of that, to be something very specific that is starving as a result of that environment. And my journey over the last year and a half is realizing it's like okay, yeah, there's definitely a part of you that is that authentic part that needs to talk about, but there's all those parts that are within you and IFS talks a lot about that and so your authenticity can change too over time and those different parts that you need can change. So it's interesting of, like, what is authenticity in your mind and how do you, how do, how can people bring that force and trust in that authenticity? And I think it's the other big thing, for people is like, well, I'm going to be authentic, but is it really me?

Marcus Druen: 1:07:47

Well, so IFS internal family system fascinating and I'm very lucky to live with not just the love of my life but also with a compassionate inquirer. She trained with Gabba Marte and she understands quite a bit about this word. I'm called Marcus Antonio's Drune and I always hated my middle name until last year when I started to self identify as a leader. So in my internal family system the person that is the leader, not the coach, but when I get out and put a team together for, let's say, an innovative breathwork course, that's Antonio's. I also have in my internal family system Arrelius, who I was giving birth in a San Pedro psychedelic experience because I never had a dad.

Marcus Druen: 1:08:39

My biological dad's f'd off and left my teenage mom alone and she was 17 and after 10 months the social services took me literally away from her and my dad, the one that raised me and who's a real role model for me as an entrepreneur and in some shape or in some really important domains in life. But the one thing that he was not there for me was emotionally available in terms of like it's going to be a riot. You made a mistake, it's fine, blah, blah, blah that kind of like caring, but also the strong, solid, like masculine energy. I just didn't have that. So I gave birth to Arrelius, right, and that's my inner father.

Marcus Druen: 1:09:20

And then Marcus is just the block that runs around. And I also have Axel, which is the name that I actually was called by for the first 10 months, and that's really the, the hurt child, the wounded child, the traumatized child. So now I'm coming back to who's talking. Well, that's for you to figure out, because every single one of these voices is authentic. And when is it actually helpful for Axel to be all scared and do you know? Transactional analysis.

Marcus Druen: 1:09:52

No Parent child, parent, child relationships, adult-to-dial relationships. So this is mind blowing, right. This is what I got trained like 20 years ago when I did my first leadership development. It's almost like an apprenticeship In business. We think that we are adult-to-dial, but when someone gets angry, they get triggered, their values get hurt, something gets some, some overreach of some other person. So someone triggers you and your ammunition blows up. This is your inner child, this is your wounded child. And then the other person, or your boss or HR they want to come at that child as an adult. It's not happening.

Marcus Druen: 1:10:31

The child will look up to a parent type figure and the parent can either be very compassionate, very caring, or maybe sometimes the parent also needs to be. Here's the boundary mate, no further. Otherwise there's going to be some kind of repercussion or consequence. So that's why it's so important to understand who's talking in myself and other people with clients in business, because if there is a child that's wounded Donald Trump, right, he's a narcissistic wounded children. You ain't going to get through to them with this clear, rational, mr Spock type rationality. You might need to invoke the parent, and that's why it's so helpful for me at least to have an inner parent, because I can sometimes really see what someone might now need, and then I can invoke that energy. I can even invoke a motherly type. I can be very feminine, sebastian, if the situation calls for it. So yeah, all of these voices are authentic. The question is what's needed, what's helpful now?

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:11:32

Yeah, I love it because I think it's a double-edged sword when people throw the oh, we need some authenticity at work. If people don't really understand all those voices they have within and the context in which they are or they've put themselves in and they might not really understand themselves what authenticity is coming out and that maybe it's not who they are going to be in a year from now, or you know that's what it requires now. So it's an interesting journey I've had and just sharing that reflection with you and I love your insights there because that's very helpful Just thinking about that relationship at work the parent, the child and then mapping that to some previous experiences I've had, I was like, oh yeah, I see, that's why that wasn't working. That's why that was working. Good, good, well, we're almost at time. We've talked quite a bit.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:12:40

I do want to touch on psychedelics one last time because I think they're one very useful tool to help people in their journeys. You know, like identifying those different parts. A great tool to work with IFS. It's got a lot of benefits. What is, in your mind, the right approach for people to gain access to psychedelics and to be able to help people in their journeys? And that's a there's no right answer, I think, but I'm really curious about your perspective on this.

Marcus Druen: 1:13:17

Yeah, so I focus on non-clinical outcomes. I'm not a therapist. That means I work with people that, at least from a clinical perspective, are considered healthy, quote unquote. That being said, we all have our trauma, we all have our stuff, our shadow and so forth. So even within this non-clinical container, there is quite a bit of work that goes deep in and, at the same time, we talked a lot about creativity. It can really help to form a different worldview, whether that's just about yourself, about relationships or even about the cosmos. It helps us to reconnect because we're so often so disconnected from ourselves, from another and from nature and I work in that field, at the same time distancing myself from recreational use, which I've had my fair share, and I don't dismiss anyone who does that, but it's not my work. I don't go to retreats as a facilitator to just have fun, which is fine if that's what you want to have. So, as you said, there is no right or wrong approach. There are safe approaches, there's a continuum, and then there are approaches that become less and less and less safe. And because we are in the third wave, I love that brand that Paul Austin created, because this is the third wave.

Marcus Druen: 1:14:43

Brian Mororesco wrote extensively about the first wave in his book the Immortality Key. How did it end? It ended with mass murder and, in particular, of the shame of women because they were activating the divinity within everyone who was invited to the illusory mysteries. And then the second wave, famously or infamously, got killed by Nixon with a war on drugs in 1971. So, no matter what your intention is, whether it's you want to change the world or heal yourself, be more creative, be more connected to your spouse.

Marcus Druen: 1:15:20

I would encourage and invite you to be really, really clear with your intention, like why do you want to do it? To then, actually, almost as a secondary thought, not as the first part of call, to think about the medicine and the dosage and the set and setting, as in like, where do you want to do it? Is it a group setting? Do you want to fly to Costa Rica? Do you want to do it at home? The really like why do you do this? What do you want to get out of it? Because I know so many people that say, oh, I got invited to this ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica. I said have you done psychedelics before? No, I invite you to have a conversation and I consider it a success of me, let's say, being a psychedelic concierge that helps people navigate the space, to then someone to come back and say, actually, I had another thought.

Marcus Druen: 1:16:08

I actually think I will in host art with two and a half three grams of psilocybin mushrooms in a one to one setting with someone that has a lot of experience with somatic trauma release, because, yeah, there's probably quite something there. So it's really horses for courses and that's just the preparation side of things before an actual journey. And then it's all about. Not all about, but it's.

Marcus Druen: 1:16:30

You know, there's a saying that the journey is 10% and integration is 90%, and I would absolutely subscribe to that. Without integration, it will become a memory of something cool, different, exceptional, but it ain't going to change anything. So that's why I reframed the right and wrong into helpful, as in. Well, if you take ayahuasca or something else that makes you purge for hours and go through incredible pain where you feel like your heart is blasted open by white light to you know, birth your own father, if you don't do something with that afterwards, then better have a joint. That's maybe my fault of you, it's not. It can be super blissful for those. Maybe only any listeners that haven't had psychedelic said it can be an absolute cosmic blissful experience and it can be the worst night of your life. Oh yeah, right. So then do something with that pain. That would be my advice.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:17:34

Yeah, that's a great advice. Yeah, the integration is so key and it's often challenging because there's so many high peaks or even valleys or lows in the psychedelic experience that sometimes you put all your emphasis there thinking, oh wow, that's going to solve everything. But it's like now you've got all the work to do and get you get back home and back to what you said at the beginning. Sometimes it takes a long time to fully do that work. You know it might take months, a year to do that integration work. Now, the thing that I think is interesting that you touched on is you're dealing with people. There's a space for people who are clinically, mentally healthy and it's not a recreational space to work with psychedelics, and that's really important because they tend to be left out. And when people talk about policies these days, it's either you know you're not going to have legalization in a medical way, medical settings, and you need to have some type of mental health issue, or it's decriminalization, which is you know it's available for everybody, and I think we're going to struggle with this for a while, especially in the US, since every state can make their own rules and it's going to be a complete nightmare to enforce. But yeah, it's tricky.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:19:07

I mean, I've come to the realization that decriminalization is probably the right way to go, because recreational use, I'm hopeful, will allow to actually scale the impact that it can have like meaning, if you've got 100 people that take mushrooms at a grateful dead concert, I'm hopeful that out of those 100 people you know, maybe 10 or 20 of them will be like oh wow, this profoundly changed my life, even though I got through it in a recreational way.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:19:41

Because I think the big problem we have today in the dialogue about using psychedelics to change things is that we assume people know what's wrong with them and we assume they're going to take the first step to take the mushroom or have the ayahuasca ceremony. And the problem is, I think we don't have enough indication about mental health and what it means to be mentally healthy that a lot of people don't even know they have problems. They're so off their baseline that the only way they might actually see the light is to come across a mushroom accidentally as part of a recreational use. And then I'd be like oh yeah, I didn't know that thing was there inside of me all these years. So that's kind of what I've done A lot of circles around this over the last few years and I don't know what the right answer is, but I'm going to.

Marcus Druen: 1:20:39

It's a wicked Go ahead. Sorry to interrupt, I think this is a British thing. The Brits call it a wicked problem. You can't solve it, yeah, so I started with psilocybin, definitely in a recreational setting and I actually didn't like it. Maybe when I started to go in I didn't realize oh okay, well, this feels a lot better, just a bit more, I guess, what it is meant for me personally to do the healing, and the same with MDMA.

Marcus Druen: 1:21:12

At the same time, we do know that if there are enough negative stories being surfaced by the mass media, the mainstream media, then the government, the people in power, can claw back on it, just like they've done before. So that's why it's a wicked problem. I fully agree with you. I find it intellectually dishonest when famous CEOs I won't name the name of the big psychedelic companies claim that only through medicalization, fda approval should this be allowed, but they had their first fucking experience in a recreational setting. That is so unbelievably dishonest. So that's why I'm saying everyone should have access to it and at the same time we need a lot of education to just minimize the damage, to minimize the negative stories that will just be welcome fodder for the people that want to keep us on boosts, on sugar, on Netflix, on Instagram, whatever right.

Marcus Druen: 1:22:13

So, coming back to the program, we have to be really smart with this to gain enough proof sorry, to generate enough. You mentioned this earlier, that they I don't know what the exact figure is, but there's something like six, seven, eight percent of any population need to be the new, and then they become the change catalyst for others wanting to follow them. So we need to get to that critical mass for enough people, no matter how they get to it, but to actually change something in their life, so that someone at work, if you're a leader, says, oh wow, you've got a bit more than the last six months. How did you do that? Well, let's have a conversation.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:22:56

I went in the field and there were cows and I looked down and there were mushrooms growing out of there and then the rest is history. Exactly, yeah, now I totally agree with you. I think that's a beautiful vision. I hope it manifests itself. I've never tried mushrooms in the recreational setting, but I am going to a Grateful Dead concert for the first time in my life later this year. It's their last tour, and so that will be an event where I'll be doing a lot of research to see how that happens.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:23:36

But yeah, no, I think we need that. We need it accessible to everyone, we need the education, which is a big deal, and I love how you call out the CEOs who've had the start of their journeys recreationally, exploring on their own. And maybe it wasn't all recreational. I mean, ram Dass did some exploration, but it was very structured exploration, very extreme, very structured, and I'm assuming a lot of the leaders now it was the same way. It's not all recreational use, I think, but it needs to be available to more people and that's not the only way. It's not for everyone. I mean, breathwork would be another thing that everybody could benefit from, and you can teach that at school, right, and it's legal. So it makes you wonder. It's like there's already good things that are available that we're not leveraging, so why add something even more complex? Do we think that we're going to get there? It's going to take time. I think it's going to maybe take 30 years to change the culture, to really be more comfortable with working with those plants and fungus.

Marcus Druen: 1:24:55

Yeah, and maybe to just round this part off, In Europe we have the saying all parts lead to Rome, right, and co-creation means let go of your need for control. So if you're in the medicalization camp, accept that there is the decriminalization camp. If you come from the shamanic underground, accept that there are some Westerners who now use LSD microdosing for more creativity to understand Bitcoin. Right, it's OK, we all want the same thing. I have never met anyone taking psychedelics saying I want to create World War III Never.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:25:33

Yeah, no, beautiful, I don't have any other questions. This is a great way to end it, but if you want to talk about anything else, let me know. Do you have anything else you want to touch on?

Marcus Druen: 1:25:50

Maybe because I mentioned this earlier, the integral theory approach which can't worry about, but it's many, many other people had a profound impact on my life and whether you take psychedelics, whether you do breath work, whether you do ice baths, swim half, whatever, like, there are so many modalities to go in there, to be so much more present in the here and now. The mantra I like to finish with is we all have our work to do. It never stops and, depending on where you are right now, you can still do more. Waking up, right, wake up, grow up, show up.

Marcus Druen: 1:26:30

This is a never-ending iteration that once you do some of the heavy lifting, it just gets fun, like some people ask me oh dude, all this self-improvement and self-development at war, you're even doing this in the bathtub with your partner at 10 o'clock in the evening. Can you not just have fun, drink some alcohol and what Netflix does like? No, this is the most fun I've ever had in my life because with a little bit well, with intention, and then a little bit of practice and discipline and just keeping at it, you just become really good at becoming you right. And that's when you say, when you talk about purpose and authentic. This is what it's all about to just become the used you that you can ever be and wake up, grow up, show up really is helping me every day on that journey.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:27:19

That's beautiful, thank you, and thank you for your time today, for your insights, for all your wisdom Really appreciated. I'm more than an hour of wisdom to share here, so thank you, thank you for your day. I'll put all your information in the show notes where people can find you. Do you have a website that people, that's easy to remember, that easy to spell, that people can go to?

Marcus Druen: 1:27:53

Psychedelicmapforchangecom. Okay, but we'll put it in the show notes. It's quite long. There you go Well there are a few other of these projects and also there's my coaching profile on the third wave directory. We'll put it all in the show notes.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:28:10

All right Awesome.

Marcus Druen: 1:28:12

Well, I have to say thank you so much for this super, super in the moment flowy conversation where I felt in myself the creative spark. I think there must be some kind of mirror neurons going on in the way your shirt looks, the decoration looks, the stuff that you have in the background. It was just an absolute joy to converse with you about leadership, authenticity and creativity.

Sebastien Fouillade: 1:28:38

Really, well held space Sebastian Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it as well. Thank you, Marcus.